Sunday, 17 May 2009

Ascension of Venusbetter late than never low in the southwestFull moon a half degree wide just after sunset peepingLater still, indigo cheesecloth nightRedwood cloaked in fograccoons moving from floor to floor,from room to room in the fog,with a sound like thin paper tearing

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Tom, the raccoons remind me to tell you how just now in the compost bin I met a young possum out, no doubt, for late night snacks of old beans.

One day last summer in broad daylight a raccoon walked down the middle of our street. It wasn't deterred by cars or people. Rabid? Yeah, maybe. More frequently at dusk I see them lurking around cat food bowls.

Tonight I fed our raccoon pack twenty-three fresh-baked croissants. I do worry about the cholestorol though.

It's told that a raccoon would live a "natural" life of c. 22 years, in the wild that is. The average life expectancy of a raccoon in a dense urban setting like this is however 1.8 years.

Most of them live in or at least emerge from and vanish into storm drains, though the ones in the redwood out front have somehow managed to survive chainsaws and worse. Generation after generation, perhaps it's the good kind of cholestorol.

That thin tearing sound of the raccoons' light chatter and the thumping of their footsteps on the roof always remind the cats indoors is a good place to be.

We had a possum once, a few years before you arrived, but it was a poor ragged fugitive creature and did not last out the winter.

When I was eight, a house-fire forced us out of our house and in to a mobile home (which was parked in the driveway) for several months.

We had six (or maybe seven?) cats at the time. In the semi-feral state our new living situation forced upon them, the cats adopted a possum, who would appear, with bare tail and beady eyes, in the furry lineup at kitty feeding time, and sleep in the cat-heap beneath the trailer at night.

They tried to befriend the local raccoons as well, but the raccoons weren't having it.

The raccoon is variously named for its characteristic dousing behaviour in conjunction with various terms for bear.

Not only in the wonderful German Waschbär you cite, but also in Italian (orsetto lavatore) and Japanese (araiguma).

The English word raccoon is derived from the Algonquin ahrah-koon-em—-the pronunciation used by Chief Powhatan and his daughter Pocahontas, meaning "[the] one who rubs, scrubs and scratches with its hands".

Spanish colonists adopted the Spanish word mapache for raccoon from the Nahuatl word mapachitli of the Aztecs, meaning "[the] one who takes everything in its hands".

Given the perils they regularly encounter hereabouts, that would seem the only way.

It's interesting that the song character was not originally called by that name. From a 1968 interview:

PAUL: "I was sitting on the roof in India with a guitar-- John and I were sitting 'round playing guitar, and we were with Donovan. And we were just sitting around enjoying ourselves, and I started playing the chords of 'Rocky Raccoon,' you know, just messing around. And, oh, originally it was Rocky Sassoon, and we just started making up the words, you know, the three of us-- and started just to write them down. They came very quickly. And eventually I changed it from Sassoon to Raccoon, because it sounded more like a cowboy. So there it is. These kind of things-- you can't really talk about how they come 'cuz they just come into your head, you know. They really do. And it's like John writing his books. There's no... I don't know how he does it, and he doesn't know how he does it, but he just writes. It's like any writer, you know. I think people who actually do create and write... you tend to think, 'Oh, how did he do that,' but it actually does flow... just flows from into their head, into their hand, and they write it down, you know. And that's what happened with this. I don't know anything about the Appalachian mountains or cowboys and indians or anything. But I just made it up, you know. And the doctor came in stinking of gin and proceeded to lie on the table. So, there you are."

Q: "I suppose the idea to do the thing with some sort of a American-Western accent also happened this way, did it?"

PAUL: "Oh that. Yeah, that was just a joke, you know, as most of it is."